11 October 2012

The Motherhood of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Today marks the feast of Our Lady's Divine Motherhood. This piece from Catholic Answers covers it reasonably well:Fundamentalists are sometimes horrified when the Virgin Mary is
referred to as the Mother of God. However, their reaction often rests
upon a misapprehension of not only what this particular title of Mary
signifies but also who Jesus was, and what their own theological
forebears, the Protestant Reformers, had to say regarding this
doctrine.

A woman is a man’s mother either if she carried him in her womb or if
she was the woman contributing half of his genetic matter or both. Mary
was the mother of Jesus in both of these senses; because she not only
carried Jesus in her womb but also supplied all of the genetic matter
for his human body, since it was through her—not Joseph—that Jesus "was
descended from David according to the flesh" (Rom. 1:3).

Since Mary is Jesus’ mother, it must be concluded that she is also
the Mother of God: If Mary is the mother of Jesus, and if Jesus is God,
then Mary is the Mother of God. There is no way out of this logical
syllogism, the valid form of which has been recognized by classical
logicians since before the time of Christ.

Although Mary is the Mother of God, she is not his mother in the
sense that she is older than God or the source of her Son’s divinity,
for she is neither. Rather, we say that she is the Mother of God in the
sense that she carried in her womb a divine person—Jesus Christ, God "in
the flesh" (2 John 7, cf. John 1:14)—and in the sense that she
contributed the genetic matter to the human form God took in Jesus
Christ.

To avoid this conclusion, Fundamentalists often assert that Mary did not carry God in her womb, but only carried Christ’s human nature.
This assertion reinvents a heresy from the fifth century known as
Nestorianism, which runs aground on the fact that a mother does not
merely carry the human nature of her child in her womb. Rather, she carries the person of her child. Women do not give birth to human natures; they give birth to persons. Mary thus carried and gave birth to the person of Jesus Christ, and the person she gave birth to was God.

The Nestorian claim that Mary did not give birth to the unified person of Jesus Christ attempts to separate Christ’s human nature from his divine nature, creating two separate and distinctpersons—one
divine and one human—united in a loose affiliation. It is therefore a
Christological heresy, which even the Protestant Reformers recognized.
Both Martin Luther and John Calvin insisted on Mary’s divine maternity.
In fact, it even appears that Nestorius himself may not have believed
the heresy named after him. Further, the "Nestorian" church has now
signed a joint declaration on Christology with the Catholic Church and
recognizes Mary’s divine maternity, just as other Christians do.

Since denying that Mary is God’s mother implies doubt about Jesus’
divinity, it is clear why Christians (until recent times) have been
unanimous in proclaiming Mary as Mother of God.

A Day That Will Live in Glory

Pray for the Four Cardinals: Burke, Caffarra, Meiser and Brandmuller

“You are the ones who are happy; you who remain within the Church by your Faith, who hold firmly to the foundations of the Faith which has come down to you from Apostolic Tradition. And if an execrable jealousy has tried to shake it on a number of occasions, it has not succeeded. They are the ones who have broken away from it in the present crisis. No one, ever, will prevail against your Faith, beloved Brothers. And we believe that God will give us our churches back some day."